Favorite foods eh? Lately been the Pho, Vietnamese noodle soup. I've had Pho 3 times in the last week and today was the best ever, a Seafood Pho. For 5.50 you get a huge bowl of broff, a container of noodles and assorted meats, another container with bean sprouts, cilantro, sliced hot peppers and a wedge of lemon. Install this in to your hot broth, let steep and off you go. It doesn't seem to matter what meats or tofu you get, it's bright, rich (lots of fat in the broths) and enough for 2 people. Or one hungry Biggles. It takes every muscle I've got to drink the last teaspoon down there's so much. But it's so good, I have to.

My wife likes pho (which my friends pronounce "FUH" - I say either "FUH" or "FOE" depending on who I'm with and which pronunciation will lessen confusion) but I've never taken a liking to it. The noodles taste a bit odd to me.

However, I've never had it the way Dr. Biggles has described it. It's always served already in the broth and never enough for two (although one bowl is a lot).

Do you have a particular pho shop you would recommend? I'd drive an hour to try pho a slightly different way... (and seafood sounds really good)

Fortunately, here in SoCal, there are LOTS of places to get a bowl of Pho!

Seems to me that it is pronounced "fuh", as in "What the Pho?", the favorite T-shirt of my son's Vietnamese pal. My kid's fav T-shirt says, "Got Rice?" and features a rice cooker on the back, but I digress.

An episode of "Calling All Cooks" on the Food Network featured a woman who learned how to make pho for her adopted Vietnamese child. It was a time-consuming task, which is probably why it tastes so good.

I usually see it offered with various cuts of beef (the traditional version?), but Dr. B's seafood version sounds like another variation. Was it shellfish or fish or a combo?

Interesting....
How do you pronounce that?
Do you say: "foo", "foe", "poe", or "Pooh" ?

Hmm, well I'm not Vietnamese so I don't really know. I'm about as European looking as one could possibly get. Blond hair with a red beard, more like a Norwegian Axe Murderer. I pronounce it FOE, as in TOE. This is how the people who serve it to me pronounce it and the fine people at Saigon II, who don't speak English, pronounce it FOE.

The San Francisco Bay Area has decent Pho places all over. Personally, I like Saigon II Pho at the Pacific East Mall in El Cerrito, CA. This is because I'm within a few minutes drive. It's sparse, over lit with flourescent bulbs and all your flatware/chop sticks and napkins are at each table. Probably about 2 days supply. The place is usually more than half full of people with their faces are lowered to their quart sized bowls. When you arrive, you're pointed to a table, given a menu. Within a few heartbeats your order is taken, I have to point to a number and just hope there's no tripe or fish balls in it. Within 8 minutes your quart sized bowl of Pho shows up with a side dish of bean sprouts, lemon wedge, cilantro and thinly sliced hot peppers. Dump it in man, all of it. Now your quart sized bowl is nearly over flowing and way over the top. $5.50. From what I hear, this is pretty much a standard price. Many times it's even lower.

Oh, here's the menu, this is what I had: Pho Ga Dac Biet (chicken I believe). Ga is Chicken.

In Seattle the soup is pronounced "FUH", but no one really seems to care how you say it -- it's just wonderful. Pho joints are as ubiquitous as Starbucks around here. My favorite version is at a restaurant called Than Vi, on Jackson St. It is listed as "Beef Sate Special" -- basically a pho bac (beef), in a very spicy broth with crushed peanuts; rice or egg noodles, bean sprouts, basil leaf, lime wedges and jalapeno slices on the side. I love Vietnamese food in general, which is lucky since Seattle abounds with good Viet and Thai restaurants (and sucks with Italian and Mexican, but that's another story).

we grew up calling it what our mom calls it-- "fah," with a down-then-up inflection.

anyway, it's my #1 favorite food that i can't find a decent vegetarian version of. especially when i'm visiting mom in SoCal. everybody always has to get all "authentic" on me and use beef or chicken broth...

best version imho is with chicken broth (chicken stock prepared w/ anise, coriander, ginger, pepper, etc), cellophane noodles (i know rice noodles are the standard-- but try them w/ the mung cellophane noodles sometime-- i love them), rare beef sliced so thin that the heat of the broth cooks them to medium-rare, thin-sliced onions, basil, cilantro, bean sprouts, scallions, lime and mint. nuc mam to taste. omg. my aunts like it with cartiledge, too, but that undoes the "omg" factor for me and turns it into "omg yuck."

wake up and smell the (horribly adulterated with milk vietnamese) coffee. Pho is soup. I got a round-eyes (yeah that's what they call us behind our backs) strong suspicion that the ingredients depend upon what was left over from yesterday's entree's.

The Filipinos are just as bad. They have a dish they call sinigang. hey, it's soup.

I guess the next thing is gonna be: a wave of Iraqi restaurants opening all over america, with some hard-to-pronounce dish that sure LOOKS and TASTES like - soup. The ingredients will vary each day, depending upon what the owner found for cheap that day in whatever place gave him the best credit terms.

sites like chowhound.com will start filling up with chatter about which one has the absolute best hard-to-pronounce dish.

Disclosure. I actually live in provincial places in Asia. unlike the non-profit do-gooders, who parachute in for a couple of weeks, I haven't lost my common sense. The locals are just average people, same like you and me.

yeah, they do have a tendency to chow down on stuff that we would serve to stray cats, but even the peasants eat plenty of burgers and fries. I even seen bagels at one province capital. Of course, they forgot to boil them before baking. I tried to explain. didn't help.

wake up and smell the (horribly adulterated with milk vietnamese) coffee. Pho is soup. I got a round-eyes (yeah that's what they call us behind our backs) strong suspicion that the ingredients depend upon what was left over from yesterday's entree's.

The Filipinos are just as bad. They have a dish they call sinigang. hey, it's soup.

I guess the next thing is gonna be: a wave of Iraqi restaurants opening all over america, with some hard-to-pronounce dish that sure LOOKS and TASTES like - soup. The ingredients will vary each day, depending upon what the owner found for cheap that day in whatever place gave him the best credit terms.

sites like chowhound.com will start filling up with chatter about which one has the absolute best hard-to-pronounce dish.

Disclosure. I actually live in provincial places in Asia. unlike the non-profit do-gooders, who parachute in for a couple of weeks, I haven't lost my common sense. The locals are just average people, same like you and me.

yeah, they do have a tendency to chow down on stuff that we would serve to stray cats, but even the peasants eat plenty of burgers and fries. I even seen bagels at one province capital. Of course, they forgot to boil them before baking. I tried to explain. didn't help.

Boy, nothin' gets past you, does it? You nailed it! All these fine people's have their own versions of soup! YAY !!! I can sleep better at night now. I had no idea.

But wait, it gets better. Get this, I call it Roasted Chicken. But my next door neighbor calls it Pollo Asado! Maybe I should walk over and just give him a bit of information. This would be, he's not fooling me. I know it's just roasted chicken.